His daughter works in North Melbourne and gets there by riding her bike to Laverton station and then catching the train to North Melbourne. Laverton is one of the lavish new train stations built at great expense and it has that new innovation of stairs (steep stairs) and a lift, in place of the once traditional ramp. The lift is a problem for cyclists, it takes a bit of manoeuvring to fit one into the small space, however yesterday the lift was not working. Fortunately she got two fellas from the platform to carry her bike down the stairs to the train.
However the real implications of this poor design (presumably by someone who does not use public transport) was that a woman who had caught the train to Laverton, could not use the lift, because the lift was broken, and due to her age, she could not climb the steep stairs and so she could not get off the platform. I know you think I'm kidding and saw this on a late night comedy skit, however that's the way it was.
I'm guessing it may be a surprise to the designers of these good looking but functionally average facilities that stairs had been invented when the stations were originally built, however ramps were deliberately installed because of their huge functional advantage. For anyone who has ever run for a train down a ramp and run down stairs, you'll understand why the ramps there.
The most unfortunate part of all this money spent on train stations is that it is a misallocation of scarce resources. These upgrades to Laverton, Footscray, North Melbourne at massive cost do marginally increase the comfort of passengers, and I stress marginally, however fixing the crumbling infrastructure like the points and signals, removing bottlenecks and delays, would be a much better use of the money. What I'm saying is I'd rather wait on the old platform for the scheduled train to arrive than wait on the new platform for the scheduled train to be cancelled or late.
I can see only two explanations for the perpetuation of this poor transport system; either after 100 years of trying we are still haven't worked it out and are incapable of running a train system or, there isn't the political will to run a truly effective and convenient rail service. I credit Australians with enormous ingenuity and ability when we apply ourselves but I'll let you draw your own conclusions.
1 comment:
I have been told there are no escalators either!
Big issue is the size of the car park, it rivals the one at Tullamarine, the bus system(?) that services the station to and from point cook starts late, finishes early and doesn't run on sundays (at least, this was the case 8 months ago).
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